Sign of the Times

Please refer to our ZDT post dated:
Monday, November 29, 2010
Subjective Decisioning Techniques

RE: The short list:
Instincts and Gut Feelings
(Intuition, Abstraction, Baseless, Intangible, Feelings, Hunches)
Herd Thinking
(Crowd Mentality, Blind faith, Parties, Non-objective, Rushing)
Pure Chance
(Cards, Dice, Coins, Eight-Ball, Roulette, Devices)
Astrology and Horoscopes
(Charts, Zodiac Signs, Readings, Interpretations, Visions, Others)
Various Traditions
(Calendars, Ceremonies, Celebrations, Holidays)
Social and Fraternal Influences
(Codes, Signs, Symbols, Handshakes, Rituals, Secrets)
Cultural Ideologies
(Sacrifices, Rituals, Customs)
Technological Influences
(Mobile Connections, Social Networks, Chat Rooms, Blogs)
Gadgets and Apps
(Computers, Smart Phones, Programs, Media Players, Digitals)
Clairvoyance-Psychics-Readings
(Visions, Readings, Signs, Symbols)
Family, Friends and Business Influences
(Bias, Prejudice, Tradition, Influence, Habit, Rituals)
Other Beliefs and Cults
(Evolution, Scientology, Church of the XXX, Zen Buddhism)
Churches, Denominations and Organizations
(Countless)

This writer states:
If you look to your horoscope for a preview of your day, look again: You're probably following somebody else's supposed fate.

"Astrology tells us that the sun is in one position, whereas astronomy tells us it's in another position," said Joe Rao, SPACE.com's skywatching columnist and a lecturer at New York's Hayden Planetarium.

The shift is caused by precession, the wobble in the Earth's axis caused by the gravitational attraction of the moon to the Earth's equator. Precession popped into the spotlight this week after Minnesota Planetarium Society board member Parke Kunkle told the Minneapolis Star-Tribune about the gap between the astrological and the astronomical view. The story spread around the Internet quickly, but it's actually old news, Rao said.

Very old news.

"The earliest known astronomer to recognize and assess the movement of precession was Aristarchus of Samos, who lived around 280 B.C.," Rao told LiveScience.

The attention triggered by his interview with the newspaper has been "astounding." Kunkle, who teaches astronomy at Minneapolis Community and Technical College, told Livescience, He gave the interview at the request of the paper to discuss precession, and the science he described is centuries old, he said.

"Bombshell dropped?" Kunkle said. "Well, not really."

Here's what astronomers know: The Earth is like a wobbly top. As it rotates, its axis swings in a circle, pointing in different directions. As the Earth's position shifts, so does our perspective of the night sky.

For example, Rao said, we take the North Star, Polaris, for granted. It's the star most closely aligned with Earth's North Pole. But back when the pyramids were constructed, the star that aligned with the North Pole wasn't Polaris at all: It was a star in the constellation Draco called Thuban. In 12,000 years, Earth's North Star will be Vega, the brightest star in the constellation Lyra. The complete rotation takes 26,000 years, Rao said.

"Everything in the sky is in flux," he said.

Even if the astrological signs were stable, there's no evidence the stars have anything to do with people's day-to-day existence. One 2006 study published in the journal Personality and individual differences used data from more than 15,000 people and found no relationship between date of birth and personality.

For full article and credits:
http://www.csmonitor.com/Science/2011/0113/New-zodiac-signs-2011-Why-astrology-is-even-sillier-than-we-thought

ZDT Author’s note:

All that to say: The Astrology and Horoscope category is but one subjective and intangible issue to keep the decisioning process confusing (shown above). Will believers continue to refer (many on a daily basis) to the zodiac charts as a basis for their decisioning? Of course. And, based on research, millions of our U.S. population will do just that.

Point is, as you look through this and many of the other headings, do you see other weak spots that, when unquestioned, could influence your decisioning negatively.

You decide.